Last night my big task for the evening was the Christmas cards. So I sat at the computer with my big stack of cards and I addressed envelopes, and then we finalized the yearly holiday letter and Richard and I stuffed cards and letters into envelopes. And when it was done, we had a sizable stack of about 60 or 70 cards sitting on the table, waiting to be mailed. Sadly, this is not yet all of them, as we still have yet to track down quite a few addresses, but it’s the majority of them; enough so that I can safely cross this particular task off the slowly shrinking list of tasks that must be done by Christmas.

Once the cards were done I got antsy to get them into the mail. So we set off to find a mailbox. I’m so used to seeing those little blue drop-off boxes on street corners that it’s been odd to not find a single one of them in our new location. So as part of the mailbox search, we decided to do just a little bit more exploring in our neighborhood, and that’s when we saw the lights.

There is a tiny little street about three or four long blocks away that goes all out for Christmas, as we discovered. The sidewalks are (mostly) lined with arches of lights, and every house looks about like what you might expect if the goal was not so much a style or theme, but just to see how many lights one can put outside. There were a (very few) inflatables, and one yard had several large plywood cut-outs, including a rather disturbing bigger-than-life Santa as muscle man, but it was mostly about the lights. And it was awesome. It’s this little home-grown light display and there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it, but it is so very obvious that they love it. It’s a little bit messy and a little bit discombobulated, but it’s so darn earnest and enthusiastic that one cannot help but be charmed by it.

We did eventually find a mailbox (near a grocery store) and dropped off the pile of cards, and then we decided to do a little bit more wandering to look at lights. There were a few spots among other streets where neighbors had obviously done a minimal bit of coordination, with lights strung across the street and between yards, but nothing that quite compared to that one little street tucked away down the road from our house.

Oh, and if some of you have been waiting for the karma stick to smack me upside the head after last night’s posting, don’t worry. As we came home, we spotted something, half-hidden behind a chimney and some extremely tall trees. On a roof just down the street there is a giant inflatable Santa riding a big green motorcycle. Ah well. It was a lovely dream while it lasted.

 (Picture is blurry (it was dark, we were in a car) but I had to share, because how else could you all see just how disturbing this really is? Yes, Santa is, indeed, wearing a cape. You’re welcome)

Happy Holidays!